CAR OF THE FUTURE

Over the last 50 years the technology of car engines has not changed very much. We still use the "old" combustion engines, which have obviously become more and more non-polluting, but still have a low energy efficiency.
Scientists, car manufacturers and especially environmentalists are thinking about new car engine concepts:

• Compared to current vehicles emissions should be 100 to 1000 times less.
• The weight of the chassis should be greatly reduced but it should still be as strong as steel.
• It should achieve 100 to several hundred miles per gallon or, in the case of alternatives to combustion engines, should not have to be recharged every hundred miles.
• The fuel they use should also be renewable.
• When the vehicle is stopped, its kinetic energy from the spinning wheels should be usefully converted and stored.

Conventional combustion engines with steel chassis are very heavy and also have high emissons. Electric vehicles have a low driving range and have to be recharged every 80 or 100 miles. Hybrid cars combine the advantages from both the combustion engine cars and electric vehicles. There are many hybrid system concepts using fuel cells, gas turbines and diesels in combination with batteries and ultra capacitors, but there is often a basic construcion principle:

Block Diagram

• The control unit consists of a power unit, a computer for controlling and managing the energy flow automatically and an interface unit to the driver.
• The energy storage can be very small because it is only a temporary storage. It could be realised with conventional batteries or modern supercapacitors.
• The chassis of the car could be made of ultralight composite materials including fiber glass, Kevlar and carbon fibers. These materials are well known in the aircraft construction, for example super-light gliders are completely made of composite materials. The same materials are used to make high-tech tennis rackets and are even strong enough to build the vehicle frames with.
• There is no mechanical connection between the power unit and the wheels; therefore, all motive power is transferred electrically to an electric motor that drives the wheels. It is also possible to spin every wheel with a seperate electric motor. In this way 4WD would only be a software problem, which could be solved by the power unit.
• In the event of braking, when the vehicle must be slowed or stopped, the electric motor would work as a generator, in order to convert the kinetic energy into electrical energy, which could be stored in the vehicles batteries or modern supercapacitors. To stop the car quickly in emergencies and panic situations there is also a mechanical brake. When the brakes are applied in a contemporary vehicle, the momentum heats up the brakes and the energy is lost.

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ADVANTAGES OF HYBRID ENGINES

• the engine drives the generator to run at optimum performance
• the engine never idles, which reduces vehicle emissions
• the engine could burn low-polluting fuel like natural gas or methanol, hydrogen or alcohol

The great advantage of the hybrid vehicle is, that it generates its own electricity. There are different possibilities to do this:

• FUEL CELLS
• CONVENTIONAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

Information taken from BOMIN SOLAR, SIGNON SAN DIEGO, FUTURE DRIVE and WORLD WATCH.